Roland Barthes
A New Cycle of Satirical Works
ttmdc
m One of the greatest poster artists of all time, Raymond
Savignac (born in 1907) was once termed an homme de choc,
but his real art has lain more in his uncanny ability to reduce
messages to their very simplest terms (see article in Graphis
109). This past master of the poster has recently proved, in a
series of works that carry him into the field of social satire,
that he has not lost one whit of his gift for merciless concision.
This series appeared under the apt title of Defense d'afficher -
Stick no billsOur text is taken from a portfolio in which some
of these works have been published (see p. 486). Editor
m Raymond Savignac (geboren 1907), einer der grössten Pla-
katkünstler aller Zeiten, galt einst als homme de choc, aber seine
wahre Kunst lag mehr in der unheimlichen Fahigkeit, Aus-
sagenauf ihren Wesenskernzu reduzieren (siehe Graphis 109).
Eine Reihe von Arbeiten im Bereich der Gesellschaftssatire
hat jüngst bewiesen, dass dieser Altmeister des Plakats die
Gabe gnadenloser Verdichtung nicht verloren hat. Die Serie
hatte den treffenden Titel Defense d'afficher - Plakate ankleben
verboten! Unser Text stammt aus einer Mappe, in der einige
dieser Werke erschienen sind (siehe S. 486). Redaktion
m L'un des plus grands affichistes de tous les temps, Raymond
Savignac (né en 1907), jadis célébré comme «homme de
choc», a toujours excellé dans Part de réduire tout message
publicitaire a l'essentiel (cf. notre article dans Graphis 109).
Cet ancien maitre de l'affiche vient d'apporter la preuve, dans
une série d'ceuvres satiriques publiées sous le titre de Defense
d'afficher, qu'il n'a rien perdu de ce don redoutable dès qu'il est
appliqué a la critique sociale. Notre texte est emprunté a un
album regroupant certains de ces dessins d'une impitoyable
concision. (Cf. a ce sujet la p. 486) La Redaction
442
mus,rive
A few simple pictures are all Savignac needs to build up as we wtii a
little encyclopaedia of modern timesFrance as a victim of teclici
progress, mass communications, factories, agriculture, housing, ipci.
road traffic, pollution, elections everything that finds its wapi
sociological treatises and into everyday conversation. This way Sav-nac
has of plugging in to the most banal and problematic subjects, thijea;
- not to say pleasure - in having his say on common social issues, tlj art
of adding the spice of original wit - all this makes Savignac a monst
not one who belabours others with moral precepts, but one who ta 9 as
his subject the morals of his day.
Savignac's morality is so clear because he uses a very simple vocal lar,
based on what might be called the pictorial language of everyday: glses
denote a businessman, a cigar a capitalist, a top hat with stars and sijbes
the United States, folded arms strength, and so forth. This simplicity
reference, however, does not preclude those shades of meaning ujcb
constitute one of Savignac's charmsthe glasses of a bureaucrat ai not
quite the same as those of a newspaper-reader, the folded arms fthe
powerful car (see fig. 6) are ambiguous in that they might bony
either to an athlete or to a matron. The simplicity of the vocabulary i hit;
enriched by supplementary connotations, without which we shouobe
dealing only with communication, and not with art.
Savignac's way of writing in pictures is really poetic (but we musHve
this term the functional meaning it had in antiquity): he displace his
forms, he creates communication between things normally quite di pete
and distinct, between objects and human beings. The operative priiipi:
